BOISE — The Idaho House State Affairs Committee unanimously approved a bill Monday that expands the circumstances under which a parent’s rights to their children can be terminated.
Reps. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, and Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, introduced HB 463, which would allow a parent convicted of sexual abuse against any child to have their rights to their own children revoked.
The bill adds a single line to Idaho’s existing code on terminating parent-child relationships, which currently allows a court to end a parent-child relationship only if the parent is convicted of sexually abusing their child.
“Where the law has gone wrong is if that same parent didn’t sexually molest his children, but sexually molested … other children, he has full access to his children,” said Ehardt to the committee. “This has created a problem, and I think you’re going to hear a little bit about it.”
Scott stated that judges would be able to consider these situations in termination decisions, but it was not a “must.”
“This is a’may,'” Scott explained. “This doesn’t mean that they automatically will get their parental rights terminated, but it will allow the judge to take that into consideration.”
One testifier attended the meeting. Kristina Hardy discussed her encounter with an Idaho resident who was convicted of felony child abuse against another minor but was granted unsupervised visitation rights with his own children.
Hardy described how the man’s son continued to commit the same crimes, eventually being convicted of sexual abuse of a minor at the age of 16.
“I can’t help but wonder if this law was in place at that time if that son’s future might have turned out differently,” says Hardy. “I believe that at least in part, this teen perpetuated the cycle of abuse because his father had … custody, which the courts allowed.”
Rep. Chris Mathias, D-Boise, said the bill addressed an issue he was personally researching following a previous meeting with the Department of Correction.
“I did find in a recent study that 64% of the women in Idaho prisons report being victims of sexual abuse before the age of 14,” Mathias told reporters. “I think it’s coincidental and fortuitous that this came in front of us today, because I see this as a mechanism to try to remove the environments within which that kind of stuff is happening.”
Committee Chairman Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, inquired whether the bill sponsors had a plan for moving the bill to the Senate if it passed the House.
“At this point, potentially,” Ehardt said. “We have not had a firm commit, and it would not be in the same committee.”
The committee unanimously voted to send the bill to the full House, where it may be further considered.
